Cells that Balance the Immune System

Researchers at Brown University and McGill University discovered that the 'natural killer' cells, or NK cells, help prevent T cells from taking too much action when a virus hits. This is good because the balance helps the T cells, which serve the immune system, from causing harm. NK cells are produced by a healthy body to respond early during infection. Now it turns out that these cells are even more important than they were thought to be. The researchers from Brown and McGill University now know that the cells also help to keep T cells from over responding. This balance helps the T cells maintain their role in the body's immune response, instead of becoming too abundant and start to cause harm. The discovery, published in "The Journal of Experimental Medicine", is said that could someday be useful to help treat patients with HIV or keep patients from rejecting bone marrow or organ transplants.

This article relates to cell biology. It talks about the immune system's cells and the work they do there. A cell is the smallest living thing and the article talks about the 'natural killer' cells and how their job in the immune system is necessary and very important. It discusses the balance that these cells bring and how this balance that they bring is what keeps the immune system running the way it is suppose to.

This discovery is important because it is new knowledge that is useful in any part of science that deal with the immune system and the affect that viruses on it. Also in the article itself it said that the information they found on the NK cells could be helpful to treat people with HIV and patients with bone marrow and organ transplants.


http://www.biology-online.org/articles/natural-killer-cells-keep-immune.html